Gordon
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About this ebook
Gordon was always an odd little child, given his penchant for setting the neighbours’ sheds on fire with their pets locked inside and his fascination with the funeral rituals at the church across the way. Home-schooled in the evenings within the bounds of a somewhat limited curriculum of drunken impromptu kitchen renovations and wife beatings in the resultant ruins by his father Gord, a man of troglodyte imagination and boundless determination for self-replication, his namesake son dedicates himself to these subjects with a kind of limitless and inarticulate awe. Something sinister and permanent involving the stairs to the basement seems to have happened to Gordon’s mother at a formative stage of his development, narrowing the scope of his education even further and leaving him at somewhat Oedipal loose ends.
As the steel mill shuts down and everyone in town moves away, Gordon’s father urges him to attend an institution of higher learning. Educated by a legal system that provides him with free room and board in an institution dedicated solely to freshman tutorials in applied criminology conducted by its post-graduate students, Gordon’s vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds, as do his natural gifts for sociopathic rhetoric, fatuous rationalization and reductive logic.
Upon graduation, Gordon sets out to build an innovative business with his former cellmate Carl. This ambition is not without its bloody-handed transactions and awkward issues about where to file the evidence. Then there’s the question of what to do about the pregnant and vulnerably sullen Deirdre, who spends an unusual amount of time worrying about her nails and calculating the pathetic hourly wages that Gordon and Carl’s sins bring in.
By accident or design, this dysfunctional trio on the lam breaks into Gord’s home, wherein they confront “the end of the line” and some very disturbing metaphors.
Morris Panych
Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Morris Panych is arguably Canada’s most celebrated playwright and director. His plays have garnered countless awards, including two Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama (for The Ends of the Earth and Girl in the Goldfish Bowl), fourteen Jessie Richardson Awards (Vancouver), and five Dora Mavor Moore Awards (Toronto). His plays have been produced in over two dozen languages and across the globe. Mr. Panych has directed over ninety productions across Canada and the US. He was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award in 2021 for his CBC Gem webseries Hey Lady! He has appeared in over fifty theatre productions and in numerous television and film roles. He has directed more than ninety theatre productions and written over a dozen plays that have been translated and produced throughout the world. The 2009 Off-Broadway production of his play Vigil opened to rave reviews. Under the title Auntie & Me, Vigil was also produced in London in 2003–04; and in French at Théâtre La Bruyère in Paris in 2005; and his classic 7 Stories ranks 9th among the ten best selling plays in Canada, outselling the Coles version of Romeo & Juliet. For more information on the work and career of Morris Panych, visit his website.
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Book preview
Gordon - Morris Panych
Contents
Cover
First Production Notes
Act One
1
2
4
5
6
7
Act Two
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Epilogue
About the Playwright
Copyright Information
for my mother, in memory
of her extraordinary
story-telling
Gordon was first produced at the Segal Centre Theatre for the Performing Arts in Montreal on October 2, 2010, presented by Sidemart Theatrical Grocery with the following cast and crew:
GORDON: Graham Cuthbertson
CARL: Patrick Costello
DEIRDRE: Annie Murphy
OLD GORD: Chip Chuipka
Director: Andrew Shaver
Set designer: Ken MacDonald
Costume designer: James Lavoie
Lighting designer: Sarah Yaffe
Music composer: Joe Grass
Sound designer: Jesse Ash
Stage Manager: Seamus Ryan
Act One
1.
The interior of a dilapidated two-storey house, in a rundown neighbourhood of a mid-sized industrial city; even in its golden age, the house, the street, the town, only served as a breeding ground for mass labour; there is little of physical beauty here. The set is mainly a kitchen, with part of the dining room. But there are other parts, mysterious parts that belong not to the structure but to the imagination—perhaps some factory parts, or any other elements that speak of the wastelands that here and there inhabit a once vibrant and industrious landscape.
Lights up a moment; a window over the kitchen sink breaks. After some of the glass chards are cleared away, into this narrow opening crawls MELFORT CARL, so called because he’s from Melfort; a twenty-something criminal whose face is too young and sweet for the hardened convict he has become; there is something tender about him and he is a small man, lean. He scrambles over the sink, looking around for evidence of anyone, then proceeds over to the door. Unbolting it, he opens it, and through the doorway steps YOUNG GORDON, a lanky, handsome figure, also in his twenties; the thin line of a permanent scar on his forehead. His shirt and hands are covered in blood. He surveys the room; then after a moment CARL speaks; all this in darkness except for CARL’s flashlight.
CARL
Now what?
GORDON
Are you ever going to stop asking that question?
CARL
What question?
GORDON
Now what?
CARL
I just asked you that.
GORDON
Asked me what?
CARL
Now what?
So?
GORDON
So?
GORDON looks around.
CARL
Are we staying?
GORDON
Do you see us going?
CARL
So we’re staying?
GORDON
It’s what you call deductive logic, Carl.
CARL
Okay.
GORDON
Not going is staying; draw your own conclusions.
CARL
I know what deductive fucking logic is.
GORDON
Sometimes I wonder. I wonder about your deductive fucking logic, Carl. Where did you think we were tonight? In the bathroom?
CARL
When?
GORDON
When we knocked over the gas station; did you think you were in the bathroom?
CARL
I know where we were.
GORDON
Is that why you shit your pants, then?
CARL
I didn’t shit my pants.
GORDON
I think you did, sweetheart. I think you shit your pants. I think the police are out, right now, looking for a guy who shit his pants. I have an interesting idea. Instead of standing around asking dumb questions, why don’t you go out there, and tell her to get the fuck in here?
CARL
She never listens to me.
GORDON
You know why?
CARL
Because I’m a pussy.
GORDON
Don’t say what I’m going to say.
CARL
It’s what you’re going to say.
GORDON
Oh, thank you, Carl, because I didn’t know what I was going to say, because I have no fucking idea what I’m going to say next but you do; and thank the good Lord, because now, instead of thinking what the fuck am I going to say next?
I’ve got you to tell me. So, tell me, what the fuck am I going to say next?
CARL
You’re going to say about that time at Jack’s.
GORDON
Am I? You’re right. It’s like that time, at Jack’s—
CARL
I know.
GORDON
No, you don’t know. Listen to me; this is important. It’s important. Come here.
CARL swats at the air wildly.
GORDON
What are you doing?
CARL
I don’t like fucking flying things.
GORDON
It’s a moth.
CARL
What if it’s a wasp?
An arm around CARL.
GORDON
Come here.
CARL
I’m here.
GORDON
I’ll tell you why it’s important, Carl. Because—relax—because it’s sociology. Know what that is? Don’t try to answer. Just listen. Jesus you smell like you shit your pants.
CARL
I have irritable bowel.
GORDON
Sociology is human behaviour.
CARL
I know.
GORDON
Do you?
CARL
You’re—hurting.
GORDON
You don’t know. You don’t. I